


Little Talks

by pidgethepidgeon



Series: Beetlejuice Short Stories [17]
Category: Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Charles and Barbara friendship, Charles is a good dad, Cute Ending, Fluffy, Lydia still misses her mom, More about Lydia's Childhood, Sad, Sweet Ending, father-daughter bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23125138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pidgethepidgeon/pseuds/pidgethepidgeon
Summary: While looking through a family photo album Charles finds a picture of one of Lydia's old favorite stuffed animals. He sets out to find it
Relationships: Charles Deetz/Emily Deetz
Series: Beetlejuice Short Stories [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556005
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Little Talks

The weekend’s in the Deetz-Maitland household had become quite chaotic since Lydia started back at school. All the shenanigans that she and Beetlejuice usually got into during the week were now being concentrated into only two days, which equaled a lot of headaches for the more quiet residents in the house. They all secretly loved it though, just seeing Lydia and BJ getting along and being happy. Most of their pranks were harmless as well, though every now and again something in the house would be mysteriously broken with both the culprits having a guilty look on their faces. 

Charles was in the midst of fixing up their last disaster which resulted in the side room having a suspiciously Lydia-shaped hole in the thin walls along with her having some incriminating scrapes and bruises that she denies is from breaking the wall when BJ dared her to try and walk through the walls while he was using possessing her. Needless to say, the idea only partially worked but the issue was that Lydia was still solid and simply broke the wall when she ran into it with full force. While he was finishing up the last of sealing the plaster Charles looked around at his handiwork, remembering the old days back in New York when he and Emily were fixing up their old townhouse when Lydia was still small. They didn’t have much back then, he hadn’t gotten the position he had now until Lydia was a little bit older, but they were happy back then, making do with what they had. Emily always reminding Charles that it wasn’t about the things they owned, but the memories Lydia was going to make. 

He went back up into his office after he finished, flipping through old family photo albums while before Lydia got back from school. His fingers lingering on the pages, not wanting to turn them and have to snap out of the memories he was reliving. Sometimes he liked to go through the books chronologically and watch Lydia grow up, other times he would pick one at random and just flip through the pages never quite knowing what he was going to get. Emily was the one who always wanted the pictures, he had never been a big fan of them or gotten into making the albums but he was grateful that they existed. The book he was looking through at the time was one that he hadn’t seen for a while, one of the really early ones that Emily went into so much effort to make when Lydia was just a baby, her blonde curls lighting up every single page. An off-colored copy of her birth certificate taped to the inside cover listing her full name, he made a mental note to keep that book out of BJ’s reach, knowing that he would tease Lydia mercilessly if he knew what her middle names were. 

He was about halfway through the second book, where Lydia was about three years old when he found a photo he couldn’t stop staring at. There was something about it that made him pause. It was nothing out of the ordinary, from what he remembered that day all those years ago Lydia was playing in the living room with Emily, her stuffed animals all lined up for some reason on the pale blue carpet. Emily laughing and begging Charles to get the camera and take a picture. Most of the stuffed animals in the photo were probably long gone, a phase of her life that she had grown out of, some were maybe still packed away in a box somewhere or donated to a toy drive because she didn’t need them anymore. His eye caught the one she was holding in her hands, a white and grey stuffed owl that even at the time had obvious wear and tear from being played and cuddle with so much. Artie, he thought the name was. He sat the book down on his desk and walked down to the basement where some of the less important boxes from moving in where still stashed.

It was a long shot, he didn’t remember packing it but then again it was probably packed away years ago and he brought every box over from New York to Connecticut. After about twenty minutes of sifting through cardboard boxes with faded labels, he found marked “Lydia’s Toys.” Most of the contents were strange toys that had accumulated over the years including some that he was surprised still made the same annoying noises even after years of being packed away in a box and gathering dust. Others were stuffed animals with matted down fur, dolls with marker scribbles on them or bandaids from her playing doctor. Finally tucked near the bottom of the box he pulled out the dingy owl. He held it in his hands for a while, looking over all the features remembering a young Lydia carrying it around with her everywhere even on the Subway where Charles was paranoid she would lose it and have a WWIII level meltdown until it was located, but here it was twelve years later, looking as though it was frozen in time. He didn’t know why he wanted to find it so badly, something about that photo made him feel something. He debated just setting it back down in the box, sealing it up for another twelve years, maybe giving the whole thing to her if she had a wife and kids of her own. 

He took the stuffed bird upstairs with him, ran it through the washing machine and even asked Barbara to help him sew and restuff the old toy. She didn’t question it, but she happily obliged, asking him if this was a gift for someone. He shrugged, still unsure if he would simply keep it in his office for some kind of posterity or give it to Lydia. The question was answered when he lost track of time and Lydia came running up in the attic, throwing her backpack by the door and kicking off her shoes before hopping on the couch next to Barbara and her father. It to her a second to realize who all was upstairs, and even longer to notice what was in Barbara’s hands. 

“God, I haven’t seen that thing in forever,” she remarked, a hint of hesitation in her voice that went undetected by the others, “Where’d you even find him?”

“I was looking at some old pictures, and I don’t know I just had a feeling that it needed to be found? I think his name was Artie or something like that-”

“Artemis.” She corrected, reaching out for the stuffed owl. She held it in her hands for a second, brushing the now white fur with her thumb before shaking her head and handing it back to her father, “Maybe, I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.” Lydia suddenly stood up from the couch and started to walk towards the door.

“Do you want to hold onto it? For posterity sake?”

“I’m not a little kid anymore dad. I’m fifteen, I don’t need a stuffed owl.”

With that statement she grabbed her backpack and left, her footsteps could be heard going down the stairs, and her bedroom door slammed shut beneath them. Charles sat there bewildered, Lydia always loved that toy, he understood that she was older now but for her to hate it so much, he was confused.

“I’m sorry Charles,” Barbara empathized, “It was a sweet gesture, but at least you can have a nice memory of her childhood for your office.”

He looked back down at the owl, before nodding and wishing the Maitland’s a good night. He went back into his office and placed the bird on one of his bookshelves next to a framed photo of an elementary aged-Lydia beaming at the camera, two gaps where her front teeth should have been that had just become the property of the tooth fairy. He tried to push all the thoughts of what happened away, opening his laptop and diving into work. He wasn’t sure what time it was that he fell asleep but he was woken up by the creaking of his office door. Always on guard that it could be BJ trying to play a prank on him, he instantly snapped awake and shouting, “What are you doing in here?”

But it wasn’t BJ. Flipping on the light switch he saw a startled Lydia clutching at her chest as she tried to catch her breath. She was standing illuminated by the light in the hallway, her baggy t-shirt down to her knees, her eyes were puffy and red and her hands were held behind her back. Charles softened immediately and went over to hug Lydia, she was tense in his arms though not wrapping hers around him. He smiled at her, trying to calm the situation down but she still seemed extremely worked up over something. He glanced around the room, unsure of what to say when he noticed that the owl was now missing off the bookshelf. Charles nodded his head, opened the photo book off his desk, pulled over a chair and gestured for Lydia to sit next to him. Still staying silent she slowly walked over, the owl appearing from behind her back as she sat down and placed it softly on her lap. 

He flipped the book to the page he was on earlier and pointed at the picture. Lydia’s eyes softened as she was mesmerized by the photo, her mother frozen in a laugh, the owl clutched in her own tiny hands. She took the book in her hands and stared for a while, “You probably won’t believe this because I was so young but I remember this day.”

“You do?”

She nodded, “Me and mom were playing in the living room and for some reason, I wanted to line them all up in a row and dramatically recite stories that she would tell me to them. I used to reenact them sometimes too and I just remember mom laughing the whole time, not because I was being a dumb little kid but, I don’t know, she seemed to be having just as much fun as I was. She never told me my ideas were stupid no matter how out there they were, like remember the time that me and her pretended we were birds for a whole afternoon.”

Charles laughed, “You guys were VERY dedicated to the game. I’m pretty sure she even chewed up food and spit it in your mouth.”

“I know! It was so gross I can’t believe she actually did it.”

“Your mother was up for anything, we would be laying in bed at night and we would just talk for hours about all the things we wanted to do with you. Some plans sooner than others, most of them were her idea. I was never all that good at coming up with them. Like for your fifth birthday we planned out this whole party for you at this outdoor park but then it poured and she didn’t even miss a beat, she had something just as fun planned so that you didn’t have to feel left out on your special day.”

“I didn’t even know that there was ever an original plan.” Lydia giggled, leaning her head on her father’s shoulder as they flipped through more of the photo album. She scrunched up her nose at her old blonde hair and he couldn’t help but laugh, he couldn’t really imagine her as a blonde anymore either. She looked very, Lydia now, but he loved her either way. 

The two of them looked at photo albums for a long time, losing track of time, but every now and again a photo would spark a conversation or earn a laugh or an embarrassed look off of her. The owl still sat propped up in her lap, even as she started to doze off on her father’s shoulder. They got to the end of the book and she sleepily muttered, “I still miss her.”

“I miss her too.” 

She gathered Artemis up in her arms and clutched it close to her chest, “I think I’m getting better, I have days where I think I’m doing so much better and I don’t know why but seeing Artemis again… I didn’t think it would affect me this much, it just brought back a lot of memories.”

“It’s okay to remember, I still can’t be sorry enough that I didn’t let you talk about her before we moved in. I never should have made you feel guilty for wanting to think about the old times, I just didn’t want them to make you sad, you were so sad back then but the thing is there are so many good memories. Like Artemis and birthday parties and lazy days in pajamas just watching movies because it snowed outside.”

She smiled, her eyes drooping shut as she tried to fight away sleep threatening to take over, “Or when she used to speed the car down the hill we were would drive home from school, or she’d pretend she couldn’t find her house keys and pretend some monster or serial killer was chasing us. It’s the little things like that, it makes it so hard to be okay all the time because even looking at a stuffed owl that I was crazy about when I was a baby was enough to wreck me for a whole night.”

“I should have been more careful about giving it to you, it was an emotional object I shouldn’t have tried to pull it off as a casual gift.”

She yawned and burrowed further into his shoulder, closing her eyes gently, “S’okay. Can you talk to me more about her?”

He knew she needed to go to bed, she still had school in the morning but he obliged flipping through another photo album and telling stories from memories that the photos unlocked. The clock on his desk read 2 am when she finally fell asleep, he shifted awkwardly and gathered her up in his arms just as he did when she was so much smaller. He carried her to her bedroom and laid her down in her bed, pulling the covers up and placing Artemis the dingy old owl next to her pillow. 


End file.
